Year's end

Monday, 29 December 2014

As the recycling bags burst with crumpled wrapping paper and the curtain draws to close on 2014, my list of thank you notes to write grows longer. Rather than stain my fingers with ink I'll bash some keys and hammer out some manner of awkward 'ta' in the shed.

Perspective on such a year is difficult to maintain. The dizzying peak of publishing my first book sometimes obscured by the low-hanging cloud of the various pitfalls and disasters that snared me in the aftermath. As much as I would like writing books and making wine to be my sole concerns (along sitting in my pyjamas watching Mythbusters or Buffy reruns and drinking peanut butter and bourbon milkshakes), there's a phalanx of other stuff I have to do and it's not been a great year for the other stuff.

That makes it more important, I suppose, to be grateful to all of you for making Salt & Old Vines happen. Grateful to have something physical I can grab from the shelf and flick through the pages and see my name on the cover and your names in the back and my words in between. To have something that people read and that, hopefully, takes them to someplace they've never been. To have something some folks like so much that they put it on a books-of-the-year list, or make it required reading on a winemaking degree course.

Even if you didn't like it at all, I'm still grateful (and terribly sorry you didn't like it, the next book will be better, I promise).

So thank you very much for providing the highlight of a difficult year, and for quite literally helping make a dream come true. If you liked the book, please spread the word. Please review it on Amazon or Goodreads (or both). Tell friends. Raise a glass.

In the meantime, all the best for 2015. The next book is coming along, and will be launched on Unbound quite early in the New Year.

I love New Year. It's 365 blank pages waiting to be written.

Richard

PS - I'm so sorry about the abrupt halt to the vintage 2014 diaries. I will finish them.